I have been using my Thinkpad X60 as a workstation and would like to hook it up to an external monitor. I do not seem to be able to do this through the control panel - the option to select one over the other is a shaded check box....any ideas?

In general, you should be able to use the Fn+F7 key combination to activate the external monitor (i.e., VGA port). That will either immediately switch the video display to the VGA port, or if your system has the Presentation Director utility installed, prompt you for an action.